5Things to Read This Weekend

It’s the weekend. Time to catch up on some Journal coverage you may have missed or didn’t have time to read. Here are five picks that should be on your list: an analysis of what’s happening in Iraq, a column on the implications of Eric Cantor’s primary loss, a humorous look at what’s hiding in Brazil’s dark corners and part of a Journal series digging into Medicare data and the battle for gay asylum.

If you want to understand what’s at stake as a militant Islamist group marches across Iraq, read this analysis by the Journal’s Middle East bureau chief, Bill Spindle, and Washington bureau chief, Gerald F. Seib. Two diplomats secured their place in history nearly a century ago by cutting a deal drawing the borders of the modern Middle East. Now the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham is seeking to establish a single radical Islamist state stretching from the Mediterranean coast of Syria through Iraq, the region of the Islamic Caliphates established in the seventh and eighth centuries.

Capital Journal: Extremists Move on Iraqi Cities

What does the unexpected defeat of the House’s No. 2 Republican, Eric Cantor, mean? The Journal’s Gerald F. Seib explains the implications for the GOP, the tea party, immigration reform, Wall Street and the Obama administration.

Brazil is a wonderful place for the World Cup, writes Will Davies, but it’s also home to spiders the size of dinner plates. The Brazilian wandering spider is the most venomous in the world—and it’s not the only creepy-crawly hiding in the country’s dark corners. There are other spiders—and snakes. Lots of snakes.

More than 2,300 providers earned $500,000 or more from Medicare in 2012 from a single procedure or service, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Medicare physician-payment data made public for the first time in April. While there is nothing inherently wrong with medical professionals billing primarily for one thing, a closer look at a few of the doctors who make most of their money from just a few procedures reveals that they are operating outside their areas of expertise or deviating from standard medical practice. A Journal series examines the practices of doctors like Ronald S. Weaver, who administered a rare cardiac procedure to %99.5 of his patients, even though he isn’t a cardiologist.

2,300
The number of providers who earned $500,000 or more from Medicare in 2012 for a single procedure or service.

Gays and other sexual minorities have an advantage other aspiring U.S. immigrants do not: membership in a class the State Department recognizes as under attack. Arguing that they suffer persecution because of their sexual orientation, hundreds if not thousands have managed to find safe haven, and a potential path to U.S. citizenship, in recent years. This story profiles several such asylum seekers from Honduras.